


whiskey for demons and deviants alike

by meganwastaken



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, OR IS HE, Ricky Likes To Be Dramatic, Sweet Jesus, almost all the dialogue is taken straight from the william desmond taylor ep and i dont regret it, banjo is a pushover, criminal!?ricky, loose ends i refuse to tie up, lot of exposition, mayor!banjo, ricky is a dick but its okay he pretends he can justify himself, so much exposition, tagged m/m but rly theres no r/s stuff its just mutual appreciation for their gorgeousness, tagged ry/shane bc lbr this is an au, theyre essentially the same dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 18:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13863759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meganwastaken/pseuds/meganwastaken
Summary: In which Ricky Goldsworth is not a Bad Man, he's just trying to not end up dead or in prison, and Banjo McClintock is not a Good Man, because that is not a real name.





	whiskey for demons and deviants alike

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MercurySkies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercurySkies/gifts).



Ricky Goldsworth is not a Bad Man, per se. Yes, he’s done some terrible things, and has never been one to let morality get in the way of a good time, but that doesn’t make him _bad_. He gives change to beggars and buskers on street corners and always holds the door for other people and has never once been disrespectful to anyone working in retail, and he considers that enough to maybe make him a decent person, if you look past all the murdering and such that seems to cling to him like a wet t-shirt on a Hooters employee.

  
It's this genuine belief in the non-dichotomic nature of people – that few are truly, completely, irrevocably bad, and even fewer good, and the grand majority are an unbalanced mix of the two – that allows him to strut into Mayor McClintock’s office at some unholy hour, without feeling any pity or sympathy for the man.

  
Mayor Banjo McClintock – and Ricky is convinced that’s not his real name, because of course it isn’t, who calls their child Banjo – is what people would usually call a Good Man. He had arrived in this quiet suburban town not even a decade ago but had quickly made his home amongst the townspeople. His good humour and kind demeanour had made him fast friends with most folks, and led to him becoming highly respected – so much so that when he had run for town mayor three years ago, he had run unopposed, with near-unanimous agreement that he was the man for the job, despite being an out-of-towner. He had since spearheaded numerous social development programs, and overall strove to improve the lives of the people who gave him power, as little as that power may be.

  
But Ricky knows that McClintock is hiding something.

  
Because Ricky knows that Banjo McClintock didn’t exist until less than a decade ago, and Ricky knows that no one rolls up to a small town and suddenly decides to run for mayor and just leave it at that, and Ricky knows that only maybe four people in the entire world are truly Good People, and McClintock is not one of them.

  
So Ricky has no issue with getting aggressive and strong-arming His Honour into doing his bidding.

  
When McClintock’s office door slams shut behind him, the mayor’s head jerks up to stare at the intruder. The man’s face is haggard, the bags under his eyes highlighting his exhaustion. He sits at his desk, illuminated only by a study lamp, poring over the papers scattered across the surface. Ricky has a sneaking suspicion that those documents aren’t town business – the place has a population of barely nine hundred people, so there’s no way the mayor would need to be up doing paperwork until the wee hours of the morning. Ricky mentally files this information away for another day, a day where he can figure out how he can use this to his advantage, and chooses to instead focus on the surprisingly handsome face of his next victim.

  
McClintock has no reaction to the stranger storming into his office, other than blatant staring, so Ricky decides to break the ice as bluntly as he can. “My name’s Ricky Goldsworth, and I want the top house,” he proclaims, sitting himself down in front of the mayor’s desk without invitation.

  
This seems to awaken the mayor from whatever daze he had slipped into, because after a moment of shocked silence, he speaks. “You can’t just move into a town and take a house.” His tone lies somewhere between disbelief and indignation, as if the very notion of someone making such a demand is unthinkable, and Ricky supposes it usually is, but he needs somewhere to hide out for the time being and he’s grown used to both a life of luxury and always getting what he wants.

  
Ricky pauses before he smiles at McClintock. The smile doesn’t quite reach the man’s eyes, making the mayor noticeably more unsettled, though he tries to hide it. “I don’t think you heard me.” He lowers his voice, allowing an undisclosed threat to slip and snake between the words, waiting to see how far McClintock would push against him – to see if he would really attempt to deny him, without any regard for the consequences.

  
The mayor lets out a startled ‘what’, still clearly confused.

  
“I want the best house in your neighbourhood, and I want it stocked with food. Furnished, and I want servants as well,” Ricky requests, although this isn’t really a request, because he _always_ gets what he wants, and he doesn’t plan on ending his perfect record today. As the mayor watches on, pinned to his seat by shock or fear or maybe something else, Ricky takes the opportunity to lean back in his own chair and make himself comfortable. He stretches his arms out to add weight to the illusion of making himself at home, noticing that the mayor’s eyes quickly dart to the musculature of his arms beneath his thin henley. He takes note of this, and distantly wonders if the man is checking him out or debating his odds of besting Ricky in a fight, if that’s what this comes to. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t stand a chance, but Ricky has always been a fan of going for the face and he’s already decided he’s quite fond of this one and wouldn’t want to break it, and oh, actually, he wouldn’t mind seeing that face around more often –

  
“I want butlers, and you’re going to be one of them.”

  
“Sir, you can’t – I’m not gonna be a butler, I’m the mayor, sir!” Ricky takes his refusal to be a butler as consideration of his want of a house and food and furniture and servants, because he doesn’t appear to exactly be arguing against that right now, more concerned about saving his own skin. Ricky casually considers if the mayor thinks being a butler would be beneath him, if the feeling of ‘something more’ Ricky gets from this man is really just a façade he’s putting up to convince everyone he’s a nice guy when in fact he’s kind of a dick, before dismissing the idea. Of course the man would refuse to play butler – a stranger has stormed into his office and started making demands, and that’s probably a terrible first impression, and who would want to work for someone like that, but now he’s getting side-tracked and should probably return to the task at hand.

  
Ricky shakes his head, serving to both physically rid himself of his change of focus and simultaneously deny McClintock’s statement. “Naw, that’s not how this is going down,” he drawls, his smiling growing and laughter bubbling at the end of his sentence.

  
The mayor glances down towards Ricky’s mouth before hurriedly averting his gaze, whispering a quiet ‘oh shit’ beneath his breath.

  
“Your outfit’s in my car. I’ll expect you at my house later. Eight am. Leave the keys under the mat.”

  
“Yes sir, Mr Goldsworth,” McClintock says, quietly and resignedly. This is the character Ricky had expected when he walked into the office tonight; he had been told the mayor was a man of a timid disposition, not one for dramatic confrontation. He had expected McClintock to simply roll over and give in under what Ricky was told was an imposing personality. The modicum of a fight the mayor had attempted to put up had served as entertainment for him, though, and the end result was still what he wanted. However, the speed at which the mayor had given in, moving from defiant to submissive in all of ten seconds, stirred something akin to unease in Ricky’s gut. It was safe to assume McClintock had concocted some sort of plan in those ten seconds, and while he could hardly do anything to be any more than a moderate annoyance to Ricky, he had hoped that his stay here would be uneventful, and the mayor was perhaps not going to allow that to happen.

  
Ricky grunted loudly, shattering the tension that had built up in the room, as well as the quiet atmosphere. He stretched once again before hauling himself to his feet. “Where’s the nearest bar?” he asked, realising he would need something to do with his time until McClintock got his housing predicament sorted.

  
The mayor quietly gave him the directions with his fingers fiddling with the pen in his hand, still refusing to make eye contact. Ricky nodded and made his way towards the door, stopping at the threshold to turn and look at McClintock again. He took a moment to appreciate the man’s face, from his messy hair to his stubbled jawline, and allowed a glance at the open collar of his shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal lean forearms, before he spoke.

“I’ve changed my mind. Don’t leave the keys under the mat. Pick me up from the bar in an hour. I expect you’ll have everything sorted by then, and you can chauffeur me to my new home.” His tone left no room for argument as he tossed his car keys towards the mayor.

  
McClintock softly nodded his agreement, keeping his gaze glued to the keys as he caught them and held them like they were burning him. Ricky took his leave, making his way down the hall and out into the crisp night air. He spared a glance at his car where his coat lay in the front seat, but decided he would rather brave the cold than return to McClintock and ask for his keys. He began to make his way towards the bar, which was thankfully barely a two-minute walk away. He knew whiskey would chase away both the chill of the night and the nightmares he had confronted in the past few hours, and frankly, that was something he would kill for right about now.

  
Barely five hours ago, after a job had gone wrong and he and his partner had had to split, his partner had shared with him information that could potentially keep him a free man. They had told him of a quiet town, population nine hundred, with an out-of-town mayor in his thirties, a soft man who could be intimidated and commanded by a man like Ricky. His partner had pointed out the strange parts of the mayor’s rise to power, and was convinced the man was not who he claimed to be. Ricky was compelled to agree, because Banjo is _not_ a name. His partner believed he could use both his trademark charm and terror tactics to get what he needed from the mayor initially, and potentially blackmail him until he was under Ricky’s thumb if push came to shove. So far, his partner had proven to be correct, and Ricky took a moment to hope they were safe, wherever they had ended up tonight. For the time being, until the heat on him died down, Ricky Goldsworth was going to have to lay low, and what better place to do that than somewhere no one has ever heard of, where there’s three police officers and the mayor is supposedly a pushover?

  
The only real issue, he feared, would be blending in: this was the sort of town where perhaps everyone did not know everyone, but everyone certainly knew of everyone, and a newcomer would stir up rumours and gossip. Ricky just hoped that if he kept his head down and made polite small talk and smiled when he ran into people, he could maybe get away with hiding out in suburbia.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm ngl folks in case you haven't noticed i'm not a writer, but when inspiration hits and you've fuck all better to do you kinda start tapping at your keyboard. I currently have no plans to continue this but if people want me to I will? So yeah if you didn't like it I'm sorry and if you did then? Thank you? You beautiful creature? And either way hmu on tumblr @theumbrellamancan and we can yell about the boys (oh and also this is unbetaed and unedited it's almost four am leave me alone but also if you spot any errors please do tell me so i can cry and then fix them thanks)


End file.
